The Charland should have ended my ability to be surprised by the changes brought about by the coming of the Astral River. And yet, despite knowing that the system had somehow brought an entire industrial area into existence before spatially compressing it so it fit in an area far smaller externally than internally, I had expected that the landscape would remain roughly the way it had been before the change.

Last year, this area had been filled with endless fields of grain, corn and other crops, I wasn’t quite sure what. We had only travelled about a week since encountering the Charland and while the environment was a little broken and completely abandoned, it had been fairly normal. At least, it had been until we came into this area, that things had obviously changed.

The fields were largely gone, we still managed to find the occasional road or path but the vegetation had taken over. And taken over in a big way, with impossibly large bushes and trees, interspersed with grass and, strangely, plants that looked like the crops of yesteryear, only enlarged to eleven and given malevolent instincts. The world had gone mad, it should have sunk in by now, but somehow, the insanity just kept coming.

A part of me had been tempted to try going around this area, simply because it was utterly insane. The problem with that idea came when I decided to find out how big it was by moving away from the oversized vegetation and using my fancy cloak to fly up into the sky. While I wasn’t able to fly with any real precision or fine control, getting up and around trees at slow speed was easy, especially if I used my hands to guide my ascent around branches and trunks. Once I was past the treetops, the only dangers were running out of Astral Power, getting surprised by some sort of rogue gust or getting ambushed by an avian predator.

So far, I hadn’t come across any avian predators large enough to attack a floating human, nor had anyone tried to take pot-shots at me with kryptonite or something along those lines and while the wind could be a fairly large annoyance and push me around up there, I had always managed to find the others after descending. Granted, part of that was due to my bond with Luna and Lia, alongside the fact that Silva and I had ridiculously good senses, but outside of emergencies, it didn’t really matter that we occasionally needed some thirty minutes to meet up after I was flying, because I had been blown off-course. This left only the danger of running out of Astral Power and while I could run myself dry by flying, it took quite a lot of time and I could easily avoid dropping. Unless there was something down on the ground that could threaten me, like the mega-flora we had encountered. Trying to fly across that area could easily see me drop from the sky and into trouble, not that I would be willing to leave the others behind and cross alone.

But back to the idea of circumventing the hazardous area, made even more appealing by the fact that the enemies we had encountered so far were fairly low-levelled but incredibly strong for their levels, likely due to their immobility. A tree, unless equipped with incredible magic powers, would never be a truly dangerous enemy, simply because it lacked the mobility to chase enemies down or avoid ranged attacks. Otherwise, it would never be more than a matter of time to bring them down, even if the one trying to do so had to resort to building catapults or similarly oversized equipment. No, an immobile for would always have a low level compared to their power if you were in range of them.

Sadly, when I reached the altitude needed to get an idea of the size we were looking at, I almost dropped from the sky in despair. While the demarcation wasn’t sharp, I could see a clear trend when I looked in the distance, regardless of direction. When I looked back, in the direction we had come from, I could see a few of the impossibly large plants, just the occasional giant sticking out of the normal-sized vegetation, demonstrating that we had been fairly lucky to encounter these giant plants only now. But when looking ahead, I could see that the frequency of these plants was increasing rapidly, the plants growing ever closer to each other. And further in the distance, I couldn’t see any giant plants sticking out but from the looks of it, I was fairly certain that wasn’t because there were none of them but because they didn’t stick out as the entire forest was composed of them. When looking in either direction, I could see that giant plants were growing in either direction, even at the edge of my vision, meaning I had no idea how far these massive plants had spread. Or, in other words, our best bet would be to head west, hoping that we’d eventually get to a point where we wouldn’t be moving into the forest of giant murder-plants.

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After descending, I needed a few minutes of sniffing the air to detect the scent of my companions. Maybe it was because I was using scent as my primary sense to detect magic, well, scent and taste, or maybe it was simply an outcropping of my fairly high Intuition, I wasn’t sure but somehow, my sense of smell was incredibly sensitive. While I had no idea how I’d stack up against something like a trained tracking dog, especially as they’d likely have high Intuition, too, alongside specialised traits to improve their tracking, I was good enough to discover their familiar scents in the air and follow them to the source.

“We might have to make a detour,” I told the others, before explaining what I had seen. Amusingly, their reaction was decidedly mixed. Silva didn’t seem to care all that much, while Alex and Lia looked somewhat relieved at the idea of avoiding most of the giant plants. They’d likely try to get some raw materials from them as we travelled, they tried to get a little bit of everything, but the prospect of heading head-on into a massive forest of these things wasn’t appealing to them.

Luna, on the other hand, looked like I had just declared Christmas and her Birthday cancelled for the year, maybe with a side-order of homework and no cuddles thrown in, some sort of cruel and unusual punishment. Granted, I could understand why she’d be interested in exploring such an area, she was trying to learn Nature Magic as a derivative skill of her Life Magic, with plans to get the additional specialisation of Plant Magic once she got the first. Trading some of her overall slow growth in versatility and power for a period of rapid growth in a limited fashion before returning to the original path, it was a fairly sound idea, likely inspired by Lady Hecate.

But to walk that path, she needed to explore and understand Nature and Plants, manipulate them magically and increase her abilities until she unlocked the skill. It was similar to the process I had used to get my Crystal and Lightning Magic, only that I had the advantage of fairly ridiculous traits that granted me an affinity to all types of magic, allowing me to learn those with impossible ease.

Luna didn’t have those affinities, and even her Life Magic came from a connection to the Grandmother, through Lady Hecate. So, exploring a massive forest filled with impossibly large plants that could only exist thanks to magic would be like travelling on a large glacier or through an area filled with twisting and warping shadows, fascinating and challenging at the same time, allowing me to learn a lot about my magic and massively improve my powers on the way.

“Do we really have to avoid it?” Luna asked, a soft whine entering her voice as she asked, the plea completely obvious. Next to her, Silva started to wag her tail, quickly coming around to the idea of letting Luna get some additional training and improve her magic, though I also noticed that there wasn’t any real urgency coming from our canine companion. Maybe this area wasn’t interesting enough to Lady Hecate to warrant a thorough investigation, or maybe Silva knew that I was unlikely to reject Luna’s plea because I fully understood the desire to explore one’s element.

“We don’t have to,” I admitted, letting out a soft sigh, already having a feeling that this area would be highly annoying to traverse. But maybe we’d be able to create some new and exciting magical plants and have them spread through the forest, which might yield some… interesting results.

“I guess we can go and explore the area, who knows what we’ll find further north?” I decided, a part of me wondering what had triggered the plants to grow the way they had. A mystery, though one of Life, maybe it would let me learn something useful.